Eric Walker <[email protected]> wrote: The way society currently works is it has law courts and police and elected > representatives; I would prefer to iterate on this model than replace it > wholesale. >
My point exactly. It is regrettable that our society must rely on law backed by a threat of violence. This is not ideal. I am not dismissing Craig's concerns. But an untried method might be worse. Cautious iteration is the right approach. The other problem is that we cannot change the Constitution and the laws without the consent of the majority, and it is extremely unlikely the majority would consent to any radical change. Craig believes he knows a better method of government. He might be right about that. But unless he can convince a large majority of the U.S. population that he is right, his ideas will not be implemented. Therefore his ideas are of speculative interest only, with no practical application. This same critique applies to many other Utopian schemes, on the left and right. For example, the notion that we can greatly reduce the size of the central government to "get it off our backs" was popular the leftist Whole Earth Catalog movement of the 1960s. It is popular today in the right-wing GOP. I think this romantic notion of yeomen living on their own is unrealistic. As Samuel Florman points out, people have a high expectation of consumer health and safety, and that calls for a high tech society with millions of industrial standards, regulations, and a vigorous, large, intrusive government. Nobody wants a large government for its own sake. No one likes paying high taxes. But most of us are willing to put up with these things in return for things like CDC and first-class air traffic control. This is a trade-off. Most people favor it. People such as Craig do not wish to go along with this consensus, but they are forced to do so. Admittedly, they are forced by the implicit threat of violence. That is a pity, but it is how life works and it is what we must do to maintain the complex machinery of 21st Century life. It is a pity, but not heart-breaking. It is a first-world problem. - Jed
